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Leonard Baskin

Leonard Baskin (American, 1922-2000)

Leonard Baskin is widely considered one of the preeminent figures of 20th century American art. Creatively active for over five decades as a sculptor, printmaker, painter, illustrator, critic, book publisher, and educator, his work resonates with a rare degree of visual, social, and intellectual intensity. While he was a student at Yale University, he founded Gehenna Press, a small private press specializing in fine book production. From 1953 until 1974, he taught printmaking and sculpture at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Subsequently Baskin also taught at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts. He lived most of his life in the U.S., but spent nine years in Devon at Lurley Manor, Lurley, near Tiverton, close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he illustrated Crow. Sylvia Plath dedicated "Sculptor" to Leonard Baskin. It was the penultimate poem in The Colossus (1960).

As a writer, he offered searing comments on important and often overlooked artists, and as a maker of books his Gehenna Press set the standard against which all fine press books are measured. Baskin was a Caldecott-honored children's book illustrator, and a watercolorist whose explosion of color burst so unexpectedly, in mid career, like fireworks over his previously black sky. Baskin was also a well known printmaker who reinvented the monumental woodcut, and at his core was a sculptor who in the estimation of many, was the preeminent sculptor of our time ("Not because I am so great, though I am, but because all the others are so dreadful.")

His most prominent public commissions include sculpture for the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial and the Woodrow Wilson Memorial, both in Washington D.C., and the Holocaust Memorial in Ann Arbor, MI. Other works by Leonard Baskin are in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, The Nation Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, The Seattle Art Museum, and the Vatican Museum.

Baskin received numerous honors, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award. He had many retrospective exhibitions, including those at the Smithsonian, the Albertina, and the Library of Congress.

*Much of this information was taken from reflections by Richard Michelson upon Baskin's death.

Available works by: Leonard Baskin American (1922 - 2000)

Leonard Baskin is widely considered one of the preeminent figures of 20th century American art. Creatively active for over five decades as a sculptor, printmaker, painter, illustrator, critic, book publisher, and educator, his work resonates with a rare degree of visual, social, and intellectual intensity. He was, however, most notable for his monumental woodcuts that brought figurative printmaking on par with the abstract expressionsists who were popular at the time. As a writer, he offered searing comments on important and often overlooked artists, and as a maker of books his Gehenna Press set the standard against which all fine press books are measured. Baskin received numerous honors, among them a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Gold Medal of the National Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award. He had many retrospective exhibitions, including those at the Smithsonian, the Albertina, and the Library of Congress.

Leonard Baskin American (1922 - 2000)

The SeaSeries: From Voyages: Six Poems from White Buildings. Illustration for poem IVMedium: Wood engravingYear: 1957Edition : Edition 1000Signature: Signed in pencilPublisher: Published by The Museum of Modern Art, New YorkSize: 4-3/8 x 15-7/8 inches. Fern 295Stock Number: [45222c]Price: $1000.00